Posts Tagged vitamin d
Pregnancy and Children – Healthy eating practice during pregnancy
Posted by in Pregnancy on March 3rd, 2010
Basically a well-balanced, rich food is very much essential for our body health and this essential will be at a peak when women are carrying. Whatever you are taking at this stage of pregnancy will be shared by your baby. Keep in mind that you are not only feeding yourself but your baby too. Your body will give more importance for your baby’s desire than its own and you could see the effect as soon as you take any food.
At the time of pregnancy you could not give off a meal particularly you could not avoid the breakfast, as the baby will be waiting for the morning breakfast. Usually, baby will not sleep during the night time when you are in a deep sleep, and if you feel hungry then think of about your baby’s position, he or she will be starving a lot. You will be having a feeling of tired if you are waiting for a long time for your meal, this means that your baby is saying to you that he / she is hungry and it will be nice if some food is taken , it will be good to obey your baby’s wish.
You must give more consideration for the right quantity of most essential food from the morning till the end of the day. For instance, it is advisable for you to take considerable quantity of milk or allied products like cheese and yogurt every day, these milk and milk products contains substantial quantity of vitamin D which will give the baby the calcium which is needed very much for the fine growth of the bones, and some addition of calcium, by the way of some other extra food will not harm you, but it will help you to have a strong bones and teeth. Strong bones are very much essential during the delivery of the baby, especially to make it normal.
You must not be negligence in taking considerable quantity of fruits and vegetables in this significant stage, sweet potatoes and some other vegetables with little glycemic will put off you from the raise of blood sugar or the dropping of the same, moreover it will give you a balance of energy. You could feel the variation when you choose to withdraw food like chocolate and junk food just for 7 days, and decide to take fruits and vegetables as a substitute; you will be able to feel that you are more energetic and lively than before. Although whole fruit is good in fiber, fresh juices too are good when you could not consume solid food items. You can follow the same principle with the veggies too. Make nutritious and delicious soups and get the rich source of health.
There are some menus that you must not take in this long period of pregnancy, the menus includes: food which are not pasteurized, some kind of fish as they contains high absorption of mercury and example of it is shark and swordfish, meat products which is not properly cooked, caffeine like chocolates and sodas. It is also not advisable to take raw eggs as it may transmit some of the dangerous bacteria, as your body will also not be able to handle some kind of food at the time of pregnancy, even though your body accepted it easily before.
Moreover your doctors are always at your help, they will provide you with a list of foods that you must and must not take during the time of pregnancy. You can also consult a good dietician, if you prefer. After consulting, ensure to follow healthy food pattern, both for yourself and for your baby.
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Article Source: Pregnancy and Children – Healthy eating practice during pregnancy
Do’s and Dont’s When You’re Trying to Conceive
Posted by in Pregnancy on January 13th, 2010
What an exciting time of your life – trying to conceive a child. There are often questions about what you should do to prepare for pregnancy and how you can increase your chances of conceiving. Here is a brief summary of some “do’s and don’ts.”
Do’s
Do improve your nutrition – getting all the vital nutrients in your diet will enhance your health and greatly improve your chances of conception.
Do eat good fats, including full-fat dairy – recent research is showing that women who enjoy full fat dairy products and other healthy fats have higher conception rates than those who follow a low-fat diet. Get your dairy products from a trusted source, preferably a farm where the cattle graze on grass.
Do take beneficial supplements – There are some supplements that can benefit you as you’re trying to get pregnant. Fish oils, Vitamin D, and a prenatal vitamin. Studies are showing that it’s better to get folic acid in its natural form, folate, so pick a prenatal vitamin with food-based ingredients.
Do get outside and get moving – Spend some time out in the fresh air and sunshine each day. This improves not just your health but your mood. Walk, swim, or get in some other form of movement. This gets your blood circulating and brings large amounts of fresh oxygen into your lungs. Both of these enhance your fertility and help you prepare for pregnancy.
Do begin charting your cycles – charting your cycles helps you determine when you’re ovulating, if you’re ovulating, and if there seem to be any issues with your cycle.
Don’ts
Don’t stress out – take time to relax each day. Let go of stressful situations and relationships as much as you can. If your work stresses you out take time to decompress when you get home at night. Try to not to stress about getting pregnant – it will happen.
Don’t drink, smoke, or abuse any drugs (legal or illegal) – your body needs to be clean for you to conceive. Give up alcohol and smoking. Get help to do this if you need. Also stop any illegal drugs and over-the-counter drugs. Consult with your doctor and decide what the best choices are for prescription drugs.
Don’t have a negative attitude – Even if you’re not getting pregnant as soon as you start trying to conceive, keep a positive attitude. It is overwhelmingly likely that you will get pregnant. But a jealous or negative attitude towards pregnant women or women with babies creates negative energy and bad health in you. Stay upbeat and take steps to improve your chances of conceiving.
Don’t delay in having basic tests run – if you haven’t conceived after 6 months or so and you feel it would help, have your doctor run some basic tests. A good starting place is a sperm analysis for the man. It’s non-invasive and easy. Basic tests will most likely let you both know that everything is “ok” and that you can (and will!) conceive.
In Closing
These basic do’s and don’ts will get you on the right track to preparing for pregnancy. In addition to these remember to enjoy yourselves as you’re trying to conceive – making a baby is a wonderful thing!
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Article Source: Do’s and Dont’s When You’re Trying to Conceive
How To Prepare Baby Food
Posted by in Babies on December 29th, 2009
Baby food is really not complicated; for the most part it is one fruit or vegetable or sometimes two. When you are cooking dinner, boil up a few extra carrots. When they are cooled, use one of those Braun hand blenders (they cost about $20) and blend up those five or ten carrots with some of the water that they were boiled in. THERE! You’ve just made baby food. And it took you about 45 seconds. And, you know those carrots are just carrots.
Babies usually triple their weight during their first year. If they are what they eat, this is the most important time to give them the best. You may not be able to give your child fresh, homemade foods everyday, but here are the benefits for you and your child when you do make the effort.
Everyone worries about proper nutrition for growing babies. Iron, calcium, and vitamin D – all of these things are legitimate concerns in children’s nutrition. However, fortified and processed foods aren’t necessarily better than whole foods. Homemade baby food, created from fresh ingredients, offers your child superior nutrition as well as encourages a taste for simple, unprocessed foods – a taste that will possibly prevent obesity-related problems later in life. It’s not necessary to offer commercial baby foods in order to have a healthy child.
The most striking advantage of baby food mills, apart from preparing home-made food is its extreme portability. You can literally carry a food mill with you while traveling to a picnic spot or just camping with your baby. As, they do not require any battery or electricity to operate, you can carry these food mills in your carry bags while traveling with your child. They are a perfect recourse for travelers hitting estranged lands where locating a grocery store selling baby food become a rarity. You can stock food and even carry them on cruise and feed your baby with nutrient rich food for months.
One of the best things about making homemade baby food is that the transition from “Stage 1″ thin purees, to more thick and textured foods is often easier and more quickly tolerated. With homemade baby food, your baby is exposed to a greater variety of tastes and textures making the transition to table foods less stressful. This is due to the fact that your homemade baby food has more texture and thickness to begin with. Homemade baby food that is more textured is more than the jarred baby food.
After cooking the food you will need to process it in either a blender or food processor of some sort. The best thing to use for the job is an actual baby food grinder or baby food processor. They are easy to work with and perform the task best. The small size of most versions makes them very portable and they can be used while you are on the go.
Using the tool of your choice, grind the food until it reaches a consistency appropriate for your baby’s stage of development.Take your baby food grinder and blend your fruits and vegetables (and meat if your baby is old enough) until it is your desired consistency.
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Article Source: How To Prepare Baby Food
How to Become More Fertile
Posted by in Pregnancy on December 15th, 2009
When you have decided you want a baby, get your body ready:
* Take folic acid in supplement form, 400mcg a day, or it can be found in some foods like cornflakes.
* Cut down on your caffeine intake.
* If you’ve come off the pill, there’s some dispute about how long you should wait before trying to conceive, but it’s probably best to wait 2-3 months.
* The man should take zinc supplements to increase the strength and numbers of his sperm
* He should also increase his vitamin D intake – drink milk.
* Cut down on alcohol. Even 2 pints per day will, on average, reduce your baby’s weight by 6.5 ozs.
* Stop smoking. Just one more reason to do so!
* Keep the sperm cool – ideally 2-3? cooler than the rest of the body. Avoid tight underwear and tight jeans. Try boxer shorts, they may not be the latest in designer chic, but they help the testicles to stay away from the body and stay cooler.
Have sex at the right time..
.. and frequently. To stand a chance of conceiving, live sperm has to fertilise an egg at the time of ovulation – usually around day 14 of your period. Sperm will usually live for 3 days so will hang around waiting and your timing doesn’t have to be exact. You can get ovulation predictor kits from your chemist.
What’s The Best Position?
It doesn’t really matter, although with the woman on top you may be reducing your chances of conceiving.
Be Patient
You can be doing everything right but you won’t necessarily conceive in the first month. In fact you probably won’t. Success is closely related to age:
* Women aged 20-25 have a 1 in 4 chance of conceiving,
* With women aged 30-35 the chance drops to 1 in 7, and the success rate falls as they get older.
On average it will take a couple in their early to mid-twenties five cycles to conceive, and a couple in their early thirties ten cycles. One in ten couples have to wait more than a year before they succeed.
What If It’s Not Working?
If you have been trying for a baby without success:
* Keep a temperature chart. After ovulation the woman’s body temperature rises by about 0.2?C and maintains this higher temperature until her next period. By measuring temperature as soon as you wake and entering the reading on a chart, you can see when you ovulate. Ideally you want to have sex just before then. You can’t turn the clock back of course, but the chart will tell you whether you ovulate at the same time each month and, if so, you can plan for the following month. The temperature rise is small and you may feel more confident with an ovulation kit available from your chemist.
* try to lower your stress levels. Stress can affect either partner and may reduce your chances of conceiving. Try to have a few days away from work just before ovulation is due.
* if you have been unsuccessful for a year or more it is worth talking to your physician.
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Article Source: How to Become More Fertile
Insufficient Vitamin D levels in pregnant women
Posted by in Pregnancy on October 22nd, 2009
Irrelevant of where you stand on the Big Bang Theory, Adam & Eve or Darwin’s evolution, the concept of women getting pregnant has been around for a very long time. And it’s something we’re very good at. Women have successfully given birth in the most difficult conditions, and to this day still do. In famine, war zones, severe poverty and with serious illnesses, women have produced healthy children “against the odds”.
But that is where the problem lies: “against the odds”. And as we learn more about pregnancy and foetal development and learn more about how lifestyle and nutrition can affect a baby’s development in the womb, we also discover that there are things we can do to lower the risk of our babies having health problems. This is why pregnant women don’t drink alcohol and avoid pate, soft cheeses, raw egg and such like. It is only relatively recently that pregnant women have been advised to significantly limit their tuna intake due to the effects mercury can have on their unborn child.
We are constantly learning about pregnancy and making lifestyle decisions based on those learnings. Recently attentions have turned to Vitamin D and the suggestion that mothers-to-be, even including those supplementing, might not be getting enough of this important vitamin – crucial for the development of the baby’s bones and the health of the mother’s.
A recent study in Northern Ireland tested the vitamin D levels in 99 pregnant women, plus a control group of 38, all living at latitudes of 54 to 55 degrees. In each gestation length group there were significant numbers deficient in Vitamin D and very high numbers with insufficient amounts. At 20 weeks, 44% of the group were Vitamin D deficient and a huge 96% were insufficient. And while those that supplemented did generally show higher levels, insufficiency was still evident.
This was an observational study, and therefore cannot be used to make recommendations on the exact levels of Vitamin D pregnant women should supplement with. However, it does give some suggestion that pregnant women should take a Vitamin D supplement, especially in the winter. Why? Our bodies produce Vitamin D when they get exposure to the sun, but in climates such as the UK our bodies may not produce any Vitamin D during the winter months so we are entirely reliant on getting this from our diet. Some foods are fortified with the vitamin but this study certainly suggests these levels aren’t high enough for pregnant women.
Understandably there are very strict guidelines about what vitamins and minerals it is safe for pregnant women to supplement with which is why existing pregnancy supplements such as BioCare’s Ante-Natal Forte include 5mcg of Vitamin D. These guidelines errs very much on the side of caution – as they should – but with the participation and moral difficulties of running experiments, this caution can actually mean pregnant women aren’t getting the best nutritional support available.
This will always be the case, and the safety of every unborn child far outweighs the potential benefit more knowledge could bring. But it is also important to keep finding new, and safe, ways of increasing and improving our knowledge about pregnancy, and how supplementing could optimise the “odds” of a healthy child, and mother.
Sam worked in the health and fitness industry for over 15 years and became more interested in the role diet and nutrition plays in people’s health, so her studies took her in a more nutritional direction. She now works at a company who sell nutritional health supplements, namely Totally Nourish.
Article Source: Insufficient Vitamin D levels in pregnant women
